[33]. I agree with Dr. W. H. Green that the third view, which ‘conceives Job to be here looking forward, not to a future state, but to the restoration of God’s favour and his own deliverance out of all his troubles in the present life,’ is to be rejected. I do not follow him in all his reasons, but these two are decisive. 1. Everywhere else Job ‘regards himself as on the verge of the grave.... Every earthly hope is annulled; every temporal prospect has vanished. He invariably repels the idea, whenever his friends present it to him, of any improvement of his condition in this world as plainly impossible.’ 2. ‘If he here utters his expectation that God will interfere to reward his piety in the present life, he completely abandons his own position and adopts [that of the friends].’ (The Argument of Job, pp. 204-5).
[34]. Job’s vindication, thinks Ewald, would be incomplete if at least the spirit of the dead man did not witness it.
[35]. The dust beneath which Job lies: comp. ‘ye that dwell in dust’ (Isa. xxvi. 19).
[36]. On the text see Bickell, Merx, Hitzig; on the use of metal for public notices see Chabas, quoted by Cook in Speaker’s Comm., ad loc.
[37]. On this characteristic word for parallelistic poetry, see on Proverbs.
[38]. Note that xxvii. 13 is repeated from an earlier speech of Zophar (xx. 29). There it concludes a sketch of the ‘impious’ man’s fate; here it begins a similar description. Verses 11 and 12 of the same chapter would stand more properly (Bickell and virtually Hirzel) immediately before chap. xxviii. Mr. B. Wright is very near doing the same; following Eichhorn, he takes vv. 13-23 as a specimen quoted by Job of the friends’ ‘inconsequential’ style of argument (a less natural hypothesis than that adopted here).
[39]. It seems clear that chap. xxii. was not written as the sequel of chap. xxx. Since, however, it bears such a strong impress of originality, one can only suppose that the author placed it here by an afterthought, and omitted to construct a connecting link with the preceding chapter.
[40]. These verses have been misplaced in the Massoretic text (as Isa. xxxviii. 21, 22). They clearly ought to stand at the end of the chapter. So Kennicott, Eichhorn, Merx, Delitzsch.
[41]. But for this tendency of the poem one might follow Delitzsch (art. ‘Hiob’ in Herzog-Plitt, vi. 133) and regard chap. xxviii. as inserted by the author of Job from his ‘portfolio.’
[42]. So M. Derenbourg, who points out that none of the other speakers have a genealogy, and identifies Buz with Boaz, and Ram with an ancestor of David (Ruth iv. 19). The author of chaps. xxxii.-xxxvii. might thus be a descendant of Elihu the brother of David (1 Chr. xxvii. 18).